It is apparently not a surprise by now that internet usage on smartphone and tablets has been sky-rocketing over the last couple of years. According to the report by Morgan Stanley, smartphone internet users are expected to match desktop users by 2016. Even with this strong proof, the vast majority of small and medium business websites are still not responsive (mobile friendly). This is not only creating a loss in business opportunity but causing headache for website users.

In this blog post, we tried to explain why mobile friendly website is so crucial to your business and marketing as well as some important elements to consider while designing and developing a responsive website.

1- Usage of Mobile is Increasing

This may not be surprising to most of you, yet many small and medium businesses don’t have a responsive (mobile friendly) website. Hopefully, going through the statistics below from Smart Insights will help understanding the need for a responsive (mobile friendly) website.

Over 30% of searches from Google are performed from mobile devices.

In United States, Seychelles, Germany, Italy and India, 35% of users access the internet on a mobile device.

65% of customers provide a better opinion of brands, products and services when they offer a great mobile experience.

95% of emails are accessed through mobile phones and 15.19% are accessed through tablets.

2- Great User Experience is a Must

According to Google’s Think Insights on Smartphones and Tablets, if a user lands on your website using their mobile and doesn’t see what they are looking for, they get frustrated and there is a 71% change they will close your website immediately and land on another website (mostly your competitor). It is also said that if your users have a positive experience on your mobile site, they are 59% more likely to buy a product or service.

3- Responsive Website Design is Ideal for SEO

At SMX Advanced, in June 2012, Pierre Farr from Google went on to mention that Google prefers responsive website design over non responsive templates. Creating a responsive website makes it easier for Google to crawl your website and reduce the chances of errors on On-Page-SEO. For these reasons, hire a professional responsive web design company to create an SEO friendly responsive website for your business.

4- Speed of Your Responsive Website is Key

As per the Google Page Speed Developers, standard recommended to the content above the fold on a smartphone loads under one second and the entire page loads in under two seconds. This is usually impossible when loading a desktop version of the website on smartphone or tablet. There is a very high chance of your users leaving your website if they have to wait too long for a page load.

5- Responsive Sites Adjusts to All Devices

One of the major advantage of responsive design is that the template size of the website is created based on different screen sizes, this means no matter what device or screen size your users are viewing your site, it will adjust according to the width and height of that device.

So even in future, when new devices (Watches, Glasses, TVs etc.) are expected to be used for web browsing, your website will still look perfect and beautiful since it is responsive.

What is your opinion about responsive design? Is it something you have already added in your marketing strategy or planning to add soon? Let me know your thoughts below.

Mona Mathur is a digital marketing expert at MAC Design Inc., a full service web design and digital marketing agency based in Mumbai, India providing unique and world-class website design, web development, SEO and digital marketing services to several corporate houses, small and medium businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals across… View full profile ›